The Replacement Burglar
by Kallios the Scholar
Summary: Katie finds herself in Bree and just wants to go home. Discovered by Gandalf, who realizes how dangerous she could be as a tool of Sauron, he decides to take her to Imladris alongside Thorin's Company. But Katie's presence is already wrecking the plot, and she needs to save the story from herself. Problem is, she knows the book but is inside the movie...
1. Stranger in a Strange Land

**'Ello, my dearies. So, to explain this... I wanted to hold off writing a fanfic about ****_The Hobbit_**** until I actually owned a copy of the DVD, but story ideas began plaguing me as soon as I stepped out of the cinema from watching it, and though I held strong for a few days I eventually gave in and started writing. Also, I was kinda disgusted by all the Mary Sues I found as soon I checked the fandom, and figured that I needed to set a good example. I mean, female half-dwarf, half-fairy? C'mon, people... work with the canon that Tolkien/Peter Jackson gave you.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own ****_The Hobbit_****. Hell, I don't even own the DVD yet. Though I do have a copy of the book.**

**Final Note: If you've read the summary, then you can probably guess that I'm blending book and movie canon, so be warned: thar be spoilers ahead, guys. This story is rated T for a small amount of relatively mild swearing, violence (Orcs tend to generate this in large quantities) and references to *ahem* That Time of the Month... because it was unavoidable with a female protagonist.**

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My name is Katherine Miller (call me Katie) and I come from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I don't belong here. I don't even _want_ to be here. Just like Bilbo, I miss my home and I want to get back to it, I want life to return to normal, and more than anything else I want to see my family. I want to hug my little brothers and have a nice long cry on my father's shoulder. And then I want to eat a great big chocolate sundae with marshmallows and sprinkles. I have _dreamed_ about 21st century food.

But let me get back to the beginning.

I can't tell you exactly when it happened. I knew that _The Hobbit_ was coming out as a movie, directed by Peter Jackson, and I have to say that I was excited about it. My mom had read the book out loud to me when I was a little kid, and I had later read it on my own when I got older. I'd seen the trailers on TV and... well, let's just say that I got motivated to watch it very quickly. It helped that my little brothers were excited about it too.

I missed the premiere and forgot about the movie for awhile as Christmas rolled around, and then, only three days after we took down the plastic reindeer from the front yard... it happened. I woke up in an entirely different place.

Yes, yes, I know it sounds cliché, but that was what happened and I'm telling this story as truthfully as possible. I went to bed on New Year's Eve and woke up in a patch of wet heather about a mile out of Bree at dawn. Bree, yanno, that town where the Frodo and Co. met Strider?

I didn't speak Westron and had no idea how to communicate with the people around me, but something about my "poor, badly frightened, thin-looking waif" act must have helped because Violet Butterbur, wife of the owner of the Prancing Pony, took me in. The owner himself wasn't Barliman, which meant that I was in the wrong time period for the War of the Ring to take place. And that was a good thing! Who on earth wants to be attacked by Orcs and Wargs? Not me, that's for certain.

I spent my time learning Westron, cooking food, and generally learning how to live in what might as well have been the Dark Ages. And lemme tell ya, it was _hard work_. For a start, nobody here believed in bathing, and even years of running track and taking on-and-off sports through school didn't prepare me for the level of physical labor I was expected to do.

But I got used to it, and learned how to wear a single wool dress for days on end (sorry, folks, but Èowyn is the beginning of feminism in Arda and she hasn't been born yet) as well as how to serve ale and beer and mulled wine to the inn patrons, once I became fluent enough to understand basic requests. A few months passed, and I eventually gave up the idea that I had been brought here through some sort of freak accident or gone into a coma or something. I assumed that I was never going to return to America and grieved quietly for my family. I was allowed to sleep in the room where Butterbur's unmarried teenage daughters also slept, partly because it wouldn't "compromise my virtue" and partly because everyone wanted to keep an eye on me. I was the town oddity, after all, and was virtually helpless because of my astounding ignorance. You should have seen the way they all laughed at me when I confessed that I didn't know how to use a distaff and spindle.

I worked hard from dawn till dusk. I ate food that was cooked over an open fire or in an iron pot. I got sick from drinking contaminated water and spent a few days having my digestive system hate me before it adjusted to a new environment. I learned more Westron words and phrases with each passing day. I slept on a straw-stuffed pallet that was infested with bugs in front of a smoky fire. Mistress Butterbur put up with my total ignorance about the ways of her world and set about teaching me how to survive. Her daughters—all four of them, as well as her three sons—decided to help. I was a _de facto_ member of her family. I made a few friends, grieved quietly for awhile, then got on with my new life as a barmaid, scullery maid, cook's helper, and general inn-worker.

Ten months passed.

I spoke Westron with a Bree-land accent and was steadily progressing along the road to fluency. There were still gaps in my vocabulary and I had a feeling that my grammar wasn't the best in the world, but hey—I was learning. All it took was time and conversation for me to improve, and I seemed to have both things in abundance. I felt safe and (for the most part) welcome in Bree. I laughed and joked with the inn girls and taught them English phrases to amuse them. There was a bundle of my old clothes next to my pallet, and sometimes I opened it and ran my fingers over the denim and flannel, just to assure myself that my before-life hadn't just been a fantasy of mine and that it had all really happened. Immersed for so long in Middle-earth, I began to have my doubts.

The town's herbalist, Nate Beechwood (who was also its resident drunk) took an interest in me and began teaching me to write... which was a lot harder than learning to speak Westron, because I now had a whole new alphabet to learn and had to connect the new symbol with a sound. It was a bit humiliating, struggling through words like "cat" and "horse" and "inn" as though I was a little kid again.

But I got better with practice. Damn me, but it felt good to be able to actually _read_.

So, yes, this was my life so far. I had adjusted well enough to living in Bree, but I would never completely fit in. Soon, Mistress Butterbur's daughters would marry (the ones who wouldn't already) and the hired girls would go on to other jobs. I was an outsider, and would probably remain one here until my death. I had good teeth and made daily attempts with a washbasin and lye soap to keep my face and hair clean, as well as possessing a body unmarked by disease or malnourishment, but men and boys were polite but distant (at best) despite all of Mistress Butterbur's efforts to encourage the attention of what she saw as a good husband for me. I wasn't one of them. I didn't fully belong. I never would.

This fact was just starting to truly unsettle me when a party of traveling dwarves came to Bree.


	2. A Dwarf Named Thorin

Once upon a time, there was Katie Miller, barely sixteen years old and learning to drive, a bit of an oddity because she spent most of her time either reading or doing sports with her friends. She went to a nice school and had a nice enough family, with three younger brothers (identical triplets, God help her) and an older sister, as well as a mom and dad. There was also, of course, a dog. The dog's name was Cap'n Jack Trouble.

Once upon a somewhat later time there was Katie Miller, sixteen-going-on-seventeen and living at the Prancing Pony as the adopted daughter of Mistress Violet Butterbur, wife of Hawthorne Butterbur and the driving power behind the semi-legendary food of the Prancing Pony. Katie was a little bit taller than the locals, and was longer in the face and darker of hair than most of them. She stood out a little and was a bit of a loner, but was well-liked within her surrogate family and did her share of work.

And now I can get back to the first-person narration. Finally!

Today, I was delivering pewter-ware to a band of traveling dwarves who had come to Bree in hope of business, ones who were tinkers and farriers and blacksmiths by profession, warriors by necessity. They were distrustful of Men and spoke their own tongue among themselves, only reverting to Westron to communicate with their clients. Their eyes were hard and the Men and Hobbits of Bree were wary of them, but the dwarves did good work and so were tolerated by the townsfolk.

Well, at least that was the situation as I understood it. Most people in these times were pretty xenophobic, mostly because stranger danger was a real problem here and paranoia was a survival trait. I was lucky to have been treated better, in fact.

But anyway, I came to the forge and handed over the pewter-ware that needed mending and haggled over the price, squatting down a bit so as to be at eye-level with the short, bearded, sour-looking dwarf running the forge. There were a few more dwarves working with this one, but they for the most part ignored the humans eying them from the street with a mixture of curiosity and disgust and simply did the task that was set in front of them. Haggling over the price took awhile, partly because I had never had to do something like this before (grocery stores + set prices = modern girl's shopping experience) and partly because dwarves are damn stubborn people. I think I was cheated, actually, but not so much that I emptied the pouch of coin I had been given in exchange for having four tankards, a pitcher, and two plates mended.

I handed over the pewter-ware and settled down to wait, leaning against a wall and idly watching the dwarves work. I had been instructed to wait when sent on this task, maybe because you just couldn't trust people in Middle-earth not to run off with your stuff if you left them with it and maybe because people here just didn't trust dwarves. Tinkers in general had a reputation as thieves here, regardless of race, and dwarf tinkers more so. Xenophobia, remember? I wasn't sure that this ideal was being fair to the dwarves (Gimli had always seemed a very moral person in Tolkien's books) but then, I was a babe in the woods when it came to Arda and it was better to follow the advice of those who knew better than me.

So I leaned against a wall, probably getting the back of my dress dirty, and waited

It was all going well until the dwarves started talking amongst themselves in Khuzdul, their own language. I listened with interest, partly because I like languages in general and partly because there was just enough similarity between the dwarfish-tongue and Westron that a few words sounded vaguely familiar—but not enough that I could understand what they were talking about. It was because of my listening that I caught a word that was deeply unsettling to me: _Thorin_.

It was a name. One of the dwarves was named Thorin. Thorin like... Oakenshield? Like the name of the King Under the Mountain? But what on earth was he doing in Bree, working as a traveling smith/tinker/farrier? I could understand if he was on his way to pick up Bilbo Baggins, but what was with the charade? I don't think that he had any pressing reason to hide.

Of course, maybe I was just wrong and that there was more than one dwarf named Thorin, and that Thorin was actually pretty common as far as dwarf names go, and that this one didn't have Oakenshield as a surname. Or maybe I had just misheard it all and that maybe there was a word in Khuzdul that sounded like Thorin, and that they were actually talking about, say, cheese. Or something.

And then they said that name—_no! word! I meant word!_—again, and the dwarf that I had _very foolishly and doubtlessly inaccurately_ presumed to be named Thorin looked up and said something in Khuzdul to another, like the name was his and had gotten his attention.

God damn my ears. And my eyes.

"It isn't him, okay?" I muttered to myself in English, feeling my stomach twist itself into tight, painful knots of apprehension. This couldn't be happening. I... I was just Katie Miller, a lost and wayward girl who had fallen into the wrong world by accident. I could accept that I was in Bree and would live there until my demise, but _not_ that I was going to meet Thorin Oakenshield. No! Not happening!

"It isn't him and you're just imagining it all, Katie. Calm down." I took a few deep breaths and wrapped my arms around my midsection. "Thorin Oakenshield is a fictional character and does not exist."

The dwarf named Thorin glanced up sharply at the sound of his name coming from my mouth. He probably didn't understand the title, but the name would have been clear in any language.

Oops.

"Yes, Miss?" he asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, one hand holding my dented pewter pitcher and the other clutching a tinker's hammer. "I am Thorin. What do you want?" It was at this point that I did something incredibly stupid.

"Thorin Oakenshield?" I demanded, and at this point I couldn't stop myself. "Son of Thrain? Son of Thror?" I knew that what I was doing was stupid as soon as the words left my mouth, but like I said before, I couldn't stop myself. I just had to know the truth.

Thorin eyes widened once in surprise, but then his face settled down into an expression that was even more wary and distrustful than before. He also looked, dare I say it, suspicious and angry. He set down the pitcher and stepped away from the forge, still looking at me in a way that definitely _wasn't_ friendly, his hammer still in his hand. It wasn't held in a very threatening way, but there was a suggestion to the way that the dwarf gripped the worn wooden handle that suggested it could become threatening very quickly if he wanted it to be. I looked at it and wondered just how hard a dwarf could hit and how many bones he would break if—_when_ he did. "How do you know of me?" Thorin demanded. He looked murderous.

I gave a squeak that was pure terror, hitched up my skirts, and ran like the hounds of Hell were snapping at my heels. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

I ran all the way to the Prancing Pony without looking back, ignoring the shouts that I received for running with my dress pulled up almost past my knees (a scandalous act, I know) and dashed into the inn yard through the open gate, around the back, and into the kitchen. Only then did I allow myself to stop, but that was mostly just so that I could close and bolt the door shut behind me and lean against it.

Nora, one of Mistress Butterbur's yet-unmarried daughters, looked up from where she was chopping onions for a pot of soup that hung on a hook over the fire. "Katie?" she asked. A Westron accent did weird things to my name. "Did you bring back the..." she trailed off and frowned at me, taking in my disheveled appearance and the expression on my face—which was probably one of absolute terror. "Did something happen to you?" she asked at last.

I nodded, still panting hoarsely.

Nora wiped at her watering eyes with the back of her hand (onions, remember?) and pulled a clay mug from a cupboard, walking over to a tapped keg of ale in the corner and drawing a splash of amber liquid into it for me. The ale foamed and fizzled before the bubbles died down.

"Here," she said, using her free hand to take me by the shoulders and sit me down on a three-legged stool near where she had been working. "Drink, it'll calm your nerves." She shoved the mug into my hands.

I nearly sloshed ale down the front of my dress, my hands were trembling so badly. Nora wrapped her brown, callused hands around mine and helped me drink, bless her. I tried not to grimace at the bitter, hoppy taste of ale, but the act of drinking and swallowing floored a bit more of my mind back in reality. I was Katie Miller, nearly seventeen years old. I was sitting in the Prancing Pony's kitchen and drinking something that I did not like that had a high alcohol content.

I pulled my hands out of Nora's grip and set the mug down on the flagstone floor. My body handled alcohol about as well as a white shirt handled bloodstains, and one gulp of ale was enough to tell me that it wasn't in my best interests to continue drinking.

"Now," Nora said gently. "Tell me what happened."

I looked up at Nora's kind, earnest face and really, really wanted to tell her everything that had happened. That I had just met a fictional character I had known since childhood, that he had looked ready to kill me, and that I was currently questioning both my sanity and the reality of everything around me. The stool I was sitting on seemed solid enough, but... I reached out and smacked my hand against the stone wall of the kitchen, just to reassure myself that it would hurt a bit and that I wasn't dreaming. I didn't want to confess my fears to Nora, however: she'd probably think that I was crazy, which wasn't exactly the best thing in regards to my tenuous status as a member of her family.

In the end, I mumbled out a story about how the dwarves had scared me with something they had done. I hated to pretend that I was easily scared like that, but it was necessary and Nora didn't question it. Like most of the townsfolk of Bree, she assumed that dwarves weren't the best of people.

There was the sound of heavy boots thundering down the stairs leading to the kitchen. Will, one of Mistress Butterbur's sons and Nora's younger brother, poked his head into the room. "There's dwarfish-folk in the common room, askin' after a tall Woman with black hair an' brown eyes," he informed us bluntly, giving me a pointed look. I fit that description perfectly.

Nora pursed her lips. "Tell them that Katie isn't here," she said. "And I need you to go and pick up the pewter-ware from them."

Will nodded and ran back the way he had come. I put my head in my hands. Suddenly, life seemed so much more complicated.


	3. An Old Man in a Pointed Hat

**My longest chapter yet! Apologies for the slow build, but I wanted to properly introduce everyone and set up the story at its own pace. As per usual, if anyone spots any technical errors, feel free to leave a note or a review saying so. I _like_ going back and fixing things so that they're perfect.**

**A note to Catzan, my one and only guest reviewer who pointed out something very important: Yes, Gandalf is OOC in regards to letting someone other than Mr. Baggins go on the quest with Thorin and Co. However, it was the most plausible way I could think of to insert my OC into the story. Otherwise, yes, I tried _very_ hard to keep Gandalf in character. Do you want to know how many rewrites this chapter went through? Too many. I kept freaking out and deleting entire pages of my story because I found some microscopic error in his characterization. I respect and admire him too much to believe that there is a reasonable margin of error in regards to OOC-ness.**

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Nora and Gerda, the eldest of Mistress Butterbur's daughters, took over the Katie Protection Squad as soon as Gerda was tracked down by Nora and the situation explained. I was to have my dark hair (darker than was usual for Bree-natives, anyway, enough to pass as one of the black-haired Dúnedain) hidden under something—a hat or a hood, since I flat-out refused to wear a wimple—at all times. Also, I was to be accompanied by either Gerda or Nora whenever in public, also at all times.

Apparently the twain had used this tactic before when Camelia, their little sister who was now married (and she was younger than _me_!) had gotten some unwanted male attention. Men were always a little bit nervous when approaching females in pairs, or, better yet, trios. Especially young men. I wasn't really sure how well this was going to work when the males in question were of a different species, but hey, I'd take what I could get. And if anyone questioned me on the streets of Bree then I could have my two friends do the talking while I either made a break for it or hung back until the person was fobbed off with excuses.

This scheme of ours, while brilliant in theory, did not work well _at all_ when the people searching for me decided to rent two rooms at the Prancing Pony. You know, that place where I worked, slept, ate, and generally spent about 87% of my time? Basically, Nora and Gerda's wonderful plan was put up against the wall and shot repeatedly until dead... and maybe a couple more times after that, just to be absolutely sure and get the total amount of sadistic satisfaction possible.

Nora, of course, had simply told her mother and father the dwarves had given me a scare and that I didn't much want to interact with them (which _really_ made me feel all brave and dependable) so Master Butterbur had seen no reason not to allow the dwarves to have rooms in exchange for doing some work around the place—repairing whatever miscellaneous metal items we had that needed fixing or could do with improvement or replacement. And the dwarves had only decided to rent rooms _after_ my disastrous meeting with Thorin, which sent my paranoia-crazed mind into panicked circles over whether or not I had been seen fleeing into the yard of the inn, and how hard Thorin was willing to search for me.

I still covered my hair (eventually settling on tying it up under a kerchief, which settled all of my needs and wasn't too hideous) and tried to stick by Gerda and Nora at all times, but they had their own duties and didn't know the real reason for my newfound phobia of dwarves, so their desire to help me wasn't as strong as my own desire to have them near me was. And, what was worse, because of the work the dwarves were doing in return for lowered fees concerning room and board, they moved all about the inn. I stayed in the kitchen for the most part, but for a harrowing day one of the dwarves (_Dori_, ohmyfriggingdamngod it was _Dori!_) was in and out the kitchen, sharpening all the knives until they could splice a hair, repairing what pots and pans needed mending, as well as doing some soldering on metal pieces that needed to be joined together.

I was never alone with any of the dwarves, however. Despite the uneasy courtesy and respect between Hawthorne Butterbur, husband of Violet Butterbur, and Thorin, all of the inn's female workers were accompanied by a male relative at all times. In my case it was Will, since I had no relations of my own. It would have been nice, maybe, to have been able to talk freely and ask about Erebor and Ered Luin, but that would have given too much away about myself and what I knew. I had messed up catastrophically when I met Thorin. I'd be twice a fool if I did it again. But still, I could feel Dori's eyes on my back as I kneaded bread dough and chopped meat and vegetables, skinning and gutting a coney (how on earth had I been persuaded to learn how to do that?) that Will had caught in a snare in the herb patch. Dori never spoke to me outside the bounds of professional courtesy, however, and if Thorin knew that I was working here right under his nose, then he gave no sign of knowing.

Eventually, though, the dwarves moved on, and I could uncover my hair and act normally once again. I had read the book and knew that Thorin and Co. wouldn't pass through this town again once they retrieved their Burglar from his comfortable home in Bag-End. I was relieved... but also a little disappointed. I mean, c'mon, _Thorin Oakenshield_ had just passed through this town and I had spent an entire week doing my damnedest to hide from him—admittedly, because I was fairly certain that he wanted to interrogate me about how I knew so much about him (wouldn't _that_ leave emotional scarring) but my inner fangirl was bitterly disappointed.

The rest of me told it to shut up and quit whining.

So life returned to normal. I went back to cooking and serving ale and cleaning the inn-rooms, desperately missing cheeseburgers and my iPod, and learning how to read Westron. I was getting better at it. My printing was still despicably shaky and lopsided—I had prided myself on good handwriting for most of my life, so this was a blow to my ego—but I could manage simple sentences without getting a headache and was moving on to longer words. "Evacuate" and "Reconcile" and "Deluge" were my current favorites, though the last one was more appropriate than the others, considering the weather.

It was raining, you see.

It was raining cats and dogs as well as hamsters and parakeets, simply because saying that the skies were raining _only_ cats and dogs would be an understatement in regards to the weather. The rain had started a little before dawn as nothing more than an unpleasant drizzle, but by noon it was a full-fledged deluge that showed no signs of stopping. And it was a cold rain too, one that soaked through layers of clothing and flesh until even the marrow of your bones was chilled, and it took several mugs of mulled wine in front of a roaring fire to even _remember_ what it was like to be warm.

The Prancing Pony was doing good business thanks to the lengthy downpour, however, and even the dour-faced, laconic Hawthorne Butterbur cracked a smile as he worked the bar and handed out mugs of ale and beer and his specially potent mulled wine, bronze and occasionally silver coins piling up in the iron-bound moneybox under the bar. The sheer number of people milling around in the common room kept the central space of the Pony warm and toasty, the fire in the hearth merely adding to the heat and making it so that if I spent more than a little while serving drinks I would have dark patches of sweat staining my dress. Ugh. But hey, I was working for room and board, so I had no right to complain.

People who had been out in the downpour hung their cloaks up in front of the fire, making the garments steam gently as they dried and warmed. A strong smell of wet, unwashed human was coupled with the Prancing Pony's usual odors of woodsmoke, alcohol, and roasting meat.

It was on the second day of the downpour, right about when I was thanking God and His angels that Bree had been built on a hill and that the Prancing Pony was situated relatively high upon it, that the old man came.

Now, I was delivering food and drink, trying to wend my way among the inn's patrons without getting groped by those who'd had a few pints too many, so my attention wasn't on the door and I didn't hear him arrive. It just seemed that when I happened to glance towards the hearth there was an old man wearing long grey robes sitting on a chair in front of the fire, sipping at a mug of cider and smoking a long-stemmed pipe as though he had always been there. His hair and beard were both long and both grey, and he had taken off his sodden, pointy blue hat and hung it from a long, gnarled walking stick that was propped against the wall near his chair.

My inner Tolkien fangirl was having a fit at the back of my mind, jumping up and down and practically frothing at the mouth in an effort to tell me something, but I was too busy trying to get my work done to really pay any mind at all to the old man sitting in front of the fire. The most that I thought of him for the moment was simply that he wasn't asking for anything, and that I wouldn't have to bring anything to him, and that I could get on with other duties.

And so my attention moved on. I probably should have payed better attention, because if I had done so then I might have noticed the way the old man was treated so respectfully: only the very drunk or the very clumsy jostled him, and only the very stupid didn't apologize for doing so. Also, Gerda was making sure that the old man's cup never went empty without needing to be asked, which was a bit strange because thanks to the crowd, even the regulars were having to come up to the bar and request their refills. As I said, I should have been paying attention. Maybe I would have realized something if I'd done so.

The old man had a meal, and I know that because I saw Nora taking the food over to him, and then he retired to the room he had requested for the night and I saw no more of him for the evening. The candles burned low in their niches in the walls, and I replenished the oil in the ceramic bellies of the lamps. The townsfolk who had come to the Prancing Pony to have a hot drink, chat, and get out of the wet eventually went away to their homes, so that only those travelers who intended to stay the night at Master Butterbur's inn remained. And eventually they too went up to their rooms to sleep.

I wiped down the tables and benches, cleaned up the common room, then went and cleaned up the kitchen—scrubbing greasy pots and dishes, washing plates and mugs (people brought their own spoons and knives with them to a meal in the Dark Ages, which meant less for me to wash) and in general cleaning up the detritus and mess that had been generated from making enough food to feed twenty or more people a pretty big meal. It wasn't fun and I absolutely _hated_ grease, but it was something that needed to be done... and so I did it.

* * *

The next morning dawned with an overcast sky and more rain, though I think the downpour was starting to lose a bit of its vigor (or maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part). I was the first to awaken and stumbled out of my pallet near the fire in Nora and Gerda's room, pulling my overdress on overtop the stained linen shift that I wore to sleep. I combed my hair and washed my face and neck, then tied up my hair under a kerchief so that it was out of my way.

I wended my way down to the Pony's kitchen, giving one of the inn's three unnamed cats a scratch behind the ears in return for a rusty purr of happiness. Being an early bird was one of my traits that passed on from the real world to my life in Middle-earth. But I liked it, getting up before anyone else did and having the whole Inn to myself. Humming an old Beatles tune to myself, I stepped into the kitchen and un-banked the fire, getting out the great iron skillet in preparation to make fried bread for both the Butterbur family and the inn's guests.

I could do this, living in this world. I don't think that I would ever be entirely happy, but I would manage well enough for now and I'd only improve with time. Maybe, after a few more years, I'd pretend to be a man and travel to Rivendell. Hey, if Èowyn could do it and Shakespeare had settled the fact that men were clueless about females in disguise, then I could probably get away with my deception by wearing baggy clothes and cutting my hair short. Rivendell, the Shire... I wanted to listen to songs in the Hall of Fire and maybe have tea with Bilbo in Bag-End. Maybe the hobbit would tell me the story of his adventures with Thorin and the dwarves to Erebor!

My inner fangirl was jumping around, squealing in glee and doing a happy dance. I grinned to myself and started getting the bread ready.

"Pardon me, my dear," an old voice suddenly murmured from somewhere close behind me. I let loose a strangled yelp of astonishment and twisted in place, coming face to face with the old man that I dimly remembered from the night before. There was a steaming clay mug whose contents smelled of chamomile in one of his old, gnarled hands, and he was reaching around me with the other to get at the cupboard that held a large jar of honey.

"I-I'm sorry," I squeaked, stammering out of embarrassment and stepping meekly out of his way, too surprised by the fact that I had _not noticed_ another person in a relatively small kitchen that I now knew quite well. "I... I didn't notice you. I'm sorry. Um... Good morning!"

The old man laughed as he put several generous dollops of honey into his tea before replacing the jar. A miasma of pipe smoke hung around him, and when I looked around to the small table that had been shoved into the corner, placed there especially for Mistress Butterbur so that she could keep an eye on her children as they ate and she worked in the kitchen, I saw a long-stemmed pipe resting there on the scarred wood alongside a pouch of tobacco, as well as a plate of bread and cold sausage. Well.

"Um..." I said again, doubtlessly making myself seem very intelligent.

"Good morning!" the old man said back to me, his ancient blue eyes twinkling with mirth. And there was something about the way he spoke, the way he said 'good morning' to me... I gnawed my lower lip and stared at the old man thoughtfully for a moment, my brows furrowed together in concentration. Long grey robes, pointy blue hat, walking stick—no, not a walking stick. A _staff_. A wizard's staff.

"You're Gandalf," I said, mouth and eyes moving to resemble a trio of saucers. The old man smiled, pleased.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

I opened and shut my mouth several times, trying to think of a way to reply to him that didn't make me sound either insane or mentally handicapped. _I thought you'd be taller_ probably wouldn't go over very well. That, or a request for fireworks. Definitely not good.

For a moment I was possessed by a mad urge to begin giggling hysterically. This was _Gandalf!_ An Istari sent to Middle-earth by the Valar themselves! And here he was, in the kitchen of the Prancing Pony, smoking and drinking tea and enjoying an early breakfast—_and I was standing right in front of him_. A bubble of inane mirth rolled up my throat to the base of my tongue and threatened to escape. I clapped both hands over my mouth and held my breath, and all the noise that left my throat was nothing more than a single, choked-off squeak. Thank goodness.

I blinked my eyes, which had begun to water from the effort of stopping myself from saying something extremely stupid. Gandalf was still standing in front of me, causing my brain to crash and reboot like an overwhelmed computer every ten seconds, but now he was leaning on his staff and had his grey-haired head cocked to one side, and he peered at me from under his bushy eyebrows. Besides being overwhelmed by the fact that I was speaking to a fictional character I had liked and admired since I was seven (I could vaguely remember getting a branch and an old grey bathrobe and leading an imaginary fellowship through my back yard for several weeks when I had been around the previously mentioned age) I felt like a bug under a microscope. Gandalf was examining me.

Which made me suddenly remember a very pressing issue.

I took a deep breath and fidgeted in place, shuffling my feet across the flagstone floor and nervously twining my fingers together. "Master Gandalf?" I asked. "I... I was wondering if... if you could h-help me." My voice cracked on the last two words.

"Oh?" Gandalf asked, his eyebrows arching upwards. "And what matter could I help you with?"

"Well, um, you see, my name is Katie Miller, and I'm not truly from Bree..." I told Gandalf almost everything. 'Everything' also happened to require an unexpected explanation of the steam engine, electricity, and a demonstration of English as well as my two years' worth of French that I had learned in school, in addition to my own sorry tale over how I had come to be in Middle-earth and how I had met Thorin. About halfway through it all my mouth went dry and I ended up making another pot of tea, sitting down at the small table with the wizard, and forgetting about the duty of making breakfast entirely.

I explained that I came from a different world and how, in my world, Middle-earth was considered a fictional (though well-loved) place. I explained about Tolkien, his books, as well as Peter Jackson and his movies. I mentioned that I had read _The Hobbit_ numerous times while growing up as well as the classic Lord of the Rings trilogy twice. The only area I was skimpy with, however, was the future of Middle-earth. I was afraid, for some reason, of these _canon characters _like Gandalf or Thorin or Bilbo or Frodo or _anyone_ from this world discovering what was going to happen to them. If I met Théoden (not likely, but still) I think I was going to just burst into tears and beg him not to ride Snowmane when he answered Gondor's plea for help. I gave a broad outline of future events to Gandalf, mentioning that a great evil would rise again and that hobbits would be key in destroying it, but otherwise went vague. Thankfully, the wizard didn't demand that I give him a detailed account of the War of the Ring.

Gandalf was patient through it all, though he didn't abstain from drawing on his pipe until a bluish haze of smoke hung around his head and the entire kitchen smelled of tobacco. Sometimes he interrupted me, though only to ask questions about the clarification of some point or an explanation of something I had spoken of. He may have believed me, or else thought that I was mad, or else seen me as a child spinning fanciful lies for attention. When I had finished and fallen silent, drinking nearly all of my tea and wiping my eyes on the scratchy sleeve of my woolen dress (they had gone watery again, though not because I had been restraining myself from saying something) I turned and looked at him, waiting for a verdict.

Gandalf thoughtfully sucked on his pipe for a moment, blowing out a cloud of smoke from his mouth that formed the vague outline of a dragon that dissipated among the rafters. He stared over my shoulder for a long time, lost in his own thoughts and hopefully trying to come up with a solution to my problem that would send me home, back to the world I had come from and wanted to get back to. Perhaps, if he couldn't think of a way to send me home, he could at least have come up with an explanation as for why I had come here in the first place.

I waited for the wizard to finish with his thinking. And kept waiting. And waited some more. Finally, though, I glanced out around the kitchens and saw an early-morning glow coming through the clouded, low-quality glass of the solitary window. It was nearly dawn. I needed to be working. The other members of the Butterbur household would be rousing themselves and attending to their morning chores. I needed to attend to mine.

Muttering apologies, I stood up from my seat and took my mug of tea back to the main area of the kitchen, leaning against the counter and taking a final sip of it before I got back to the pressing duty of making breakfast.

"Well, Miss Katie Miller," Gandalf said at last as I angled the cup upwards to get the last mouthful of tea. I made an inquiring noise. "I believe I have found a solution to a problem of yours as well as a problem of mine. Tell me now, how would you like to go on an adventure?"

I promptly choked and spat a mouthful of tea into the fire.


	4. Setting Out

**Disclaimer: still don't own, despite my sore knees from hours of praying**

**Note: is there a copy of ****_The Hobbit_**** script out on the internet yet? I'm playing this by the movie and I kinda need it to be as accurate as I'd like to be. If any of my reviewers (or just casual readers, I know there are several hundred of you) know about this, then feel free to drop a line or two via a PM. Or maybe even _review_.**

**Seriously, people, more than a thousand readers have looked at this, and only 12 have reviewed. I'm kind of disappointed in humanity right now.**

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Once upon a much later time, when Katie Miller was an old woman with hair more silver than black, she asked the wizard Gandalf (who, despite the many years that had passed since their first meeting, appeared not to have aged even slightly) the inevitable question of _why_. And it was only then, after so many years had passed, that Gandalf fully explained his reasoning for selecting her for an adventure alongside Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag-End.

It was the way Katie had told her story to him, without holding back even the tiniest scrap of information or hesitating for even a fraction of a second, that convinced the wizard that the girl sitting across from him at the little round table in the inn's kitchen was telling the truth. She could not have lied to him even if she had wanted to (wizards have ways of finding out the truth, and they always know when such truth is being withheld from them) but she had not possessed even the slightest desire to speak falsehoods nonetheless.

It was also the way she had told her story that had set the wizard to worrying. Radagast was not the only one who saw the evil that was once more beginning to creep across Arda. Gandalf, too, knew that the Necromancer was stirring in his fortress of Dol Guldur—but he, unlike Radagast, suspected just who the Necromancer truly was and worried for the future of Arda.

If this child of Men that he had stumbled upon were to fall into the clutches of Sauron the Deceiver, there was the potentiality that all would be lost. The amount of foreknowledge in her mind was great enough to begin a second reign of darkness if it was let loose upon the wrong set of listening ears. This Katie Miller truly wanted to do good with the foresight that she possessed, but Sauron had deceived even the Valar before—a child who desperately wanted to go home and return to her family would have been easy prey for his lies and false sympathies.

So Gandalf had resolved to keep Katie close, and move her from Bree to a place where she would stay firmly out of the clutches of the Black Enemy. A place such as the Valley of Imladris, where she could be protected by the swords of the Elves and remain under the watchful eyes of Lord Elrond. Her 'adventure' would end there.

But of course, I didn't know this at the time of my (mis)adventure. All I knew was that what tea I hadn't spat out from sheer surprise at Gandalf's proposal had gone up my nose. I coughed hard and sneezed, feeling tea dribble out my nostrils and hearing Gandalf chuckle from somewhere behind me. By the time I had regained my composure and wiped my face clean, the Istari was sitting back at the table and finishing off the last of his sausage.

"Well?" he asked me, arching his bushy eyebrows in question.

"N-no thank you," I replied without looking at the wizard, trying to hurry through the process of making breakfast so as not to be late. "I'm not a very adventurous person. At all."

I added a log to the fire from the pile beside the hearth, in apology for spitting tea into it, then flipped the first pieces of yesterday's stale bread onto the skillet. Fried bread—anyone from the 21st century would probably know it as French toast (without the cinnamon and maple syrup) but of course there was no France in Middle-earth.

"Oh really now," Gandalf murmured almost contemplatively, looking mildly surprised by my refusal. But there was a gleam in his ancient eyes that said he'd taken my reply as a challenge more than anything else.

"Oh, yes, definitely," I said hurriedly, flipping the bread over so that the other sides would cook. "If you're searching for a burglar, I recommend that you try the Shire. Master Bilbo Baggins of Bag-End would be an excellent candidate for your adventure, despite outward appearances."

"And is that your _professional_ recommendation, Miss Miller?" Gandalf inquired from around his pipe as he peered at me from under the brim of his hat.

"Well, yes, I've read a lot of books, and I know about _this_ book and Bilbo is off to—no! Certainly not! I mean yes! I mean—you know what I mean! You... argh! Never mind, please."

I groaned in frustration and, in my carelessness at being distracted by Gandalf's annoying way of trapping me with my own words, managed to burn the side of my hand. Snarling to myself and momentarily forgetting the wizard, I shoved the finished pieces of fried bread onto plates and checked the kettle of oatmeal that had been set to cook overnight. It was finished, and _just_ starting to burn. I dished it quickly into bowls before it could scorch further and give Mistress Butterbur a reason to purse her lips and glower at me. My day was going _so_ well.

And it just got even _better_ when Gerda came down the stairs, hiding a yawn behind one of her hands and sleepily tying her hair up. Strands that had managed to escape her hands fell down and framed her face. She nodded to me, moving to take over the breakfast operations, but then stopped cold when she caught sight of Gandalf. Her eyes widened in shock. "Good morning, Master Gandalf. Is there aught that I can get for you?" she asked, sounding as though she had been punched in the stomach and had had all the breath knocked out of her.

Good to know that I wasn't alone.

"No thank you," Gandalf said. He turned his blue-eyed gaze away from her and continued puffing on his pipe, apparently lost in thought and dismissing Gerda. The woman visibly relaxed for a moment, but then she grabbed me by the arm and towed me out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the common room.

"Did the wizard ask anything of you? Were you polite? You didn't make him angry, did you?" Gerda demanded in a furious whisper in a corner of the room, looking anxious and decidedly distraught.

"Yes, yes, and I don't think so," I answered, feeling suitably confused at everything that was happening. Gerda was ordinarily a very calm, levelheaded girl—this wasn't like her at all. "What's going on?"

"Oh, oh, nothing, I think—hope, I mean," Gerda replied. "It sounds foolish, really, but Father has always been nervous of Master Gandalf ever since a drunkard poured ale down his back and Father was too busy laughing to apologize. All the beer went sour for two months, and the wine turned to vinegar in the casks. We—we are very respectful of wizards in this Inn. Tell me, what did he ask you for, Katie?"

Immediate impulse: spout lies until Gerda either believed me or left me alone. Second impulse: that's stupid and she'll just think you're untrustworthy. Third impulse: might as well tell the truth. It'll be ugly no matter how well she takes it.

"Uh... he asked me to go on an 'adventure' with him," I said, staring down at my shoes and clasping my hands together. I would have been wringing them otherwise, or else chewing my nails. Neither was a good habit.

"I... oh. That's very—um. Yes. I'll speak with Father, then. He will make arrangements," Gerda said awkwardly. She was treating me as though I'd just stood up on a table and announced to the whole world that I had leprosy. The woman moved back a few steps from me and turned to speak to her father, who was wiping out cups and tankards with a damp rag.

"That's all?" I demanded, incredulous.

Gerda frowned over her shoulder at me—not angrily, nor fearfully (thank goodness) but more as though she was unhappy with how the day was turning out and didn't want things to be any more complicated than they already were. "Is there aught else that you need to tell me?" she asked in return.

"N-no, I don't think so," I answered. "But... you're just going to tell Master Butterbur that I'm going? Just like that? No protest? Nothing? You'll just wave from the doorstep as I go off on my merry way?" I must have looked too much like a kicked puppy for Gerda to bear it, or else my words had made her feel at least a little guilty (and perhaps hit far too close to home) because the woman came over and embraced me briefly. She smelled like sweat, unwashed female, and spices.

Then, of course, Gerda stepped away and took my hands in hers, squeezing gently. "We are fond of you here, Katie," she said, sounding strangely formal. "Nora and I will remember you always. But perhaps it is for the best that you moved on to other places, where there are others more similar to yourself. The... the Elves from the bards' stories call on Elbereth to protect those of their kind that are leaving on journeys. I hope that she protects you as well."

"Thank you," I said wretchedly, mentally translating that little speech: we sorta like you, Katie, but you're kinda weird and we really don't mind at all that you're leaving. Have a nice trip. Try not to get killed.

Gerda's lips twisted upwards in a nervous smile and her hands released mine. She turned and went to begin speaking with her father, occasionally gesturing towards me as she spoke. I didn't attempt to eavesdrop. I didn't have any real desire to find out what she was saying.

I watched her for a few moments before I trudged back to the kitchen and finished making breakfast. Gandalf was gone, the dirty plate and cutlery stacked neatly on the sideboard, but the smell of pipesmoke remained all through the kitchen and was impossible to be rid of, even when all the windows and doors were open. I felt utterly miserable.

But life moved on. I served breakfast to the inn's overnight patrons and began washing the breakfast dishes, trying to forget my talk with Gandalf. Why did it seem that every conversation I had with a canon character always went so horrendously wrong? Couldn't I just... just _talk_ to someone I knew from a book without being threatened or pressganged into traveling across half of Middle-earth? Was that really so _difficult_?

My forgetting had been going along well (burying yourself in work is the quickest way to amnesia) until Nora came into the kitchen, holding a bulky pack by the leather straps. She paused in the doorway, and I stopped what I was doing to stare at her as she stared back at me. For a long, awkward moment, neither of us knew what to say.

"I heard from Mother that you were going with Master Gandalf," Nora said at last after awkwardly clearing her throat. "Will and I... we made this up for you. It has things we know you'll need. We tried to think of everything, but with a wizard... we just didn't know for certain. Good luck on your travels."

"Thank you," I said, feeling more wretched than ever. Of _course_ Gandalf would see the need to recruit me into something that I had no business in, just as soon as I began truly adjusting to more than simply surviving and earning my keep in a world that didn't have electricity. Nora and Gerda and Will and Master Butterbur and his wife were the closest thing I'd had to a family for nearly a year, and suddenly everything has gone sour and awkward between us—because of that blasted wizard. _Oh, but would you have ever fitted in completely? Would you?_ _Would you have been able to walk down the street without receiving odd looks and whispers floating along behind your back? Would Nora or Will have ever felt completely comfortable when walking with you?_

My inner fangirl was trying to persuade me to go on this adventure. Shut up, I told it firmly, scrubbing at the breakfast dishes with more force than was truly necessary, glaring down at the sudsy water as though it had personally offended me.

Elvish singing. Under the stars in June. Rivendell, the Last Homely House. Elrond Peredhil and Arwen Undómiel. Tales of the Noldor in the First Age when Middle-earth was young, sung by Elvish bards in the Hall of Fire...

_Giant spiders_, I pointed out to that nasty, wheedling voice. Fangirls, they always forgot what really happened in adventures. Oh, yes, and didn't Wargs and Goblins attack? And didn't Bilbo have to have a riddle contest with a cannibalistic, schizophrenic little freak somewhere below the Misty Mountains? In the dark? No! Not for me! I most certainly was not going on any sort of adventure. No!

"Ah, Miss Miller." Gandalf poked his head through the kitchen doorway, making me jump. His eyes darted to Nora, who was still holding the leather pack by its straps and standing uncertainly in the kitchen doorway. Then his eyes went back to me and he gave me a kind, almost grandfatherly sort of smile. "Good to see that you've prepared yourself."

"Master Gandalf?" I asked, straightening and clasping my wet hands behind my back after nervously tucking my hair behind my ears.

"Yes?" he asked in return.

"I don't want to go on any adventure. It's not that-that I wouldn't enjoy your company or some such thing, but... well, just look at me. I'm not a warrior, or a wizard like you. I don't even have the stealth of a hobbit! I just wouldn't be... suitable... for whatever task you had in mind for me."

"And what task, Miss Miller, do you believe I have in mind for you?" Gandalf asked. There was the barest of edges in his voice now. It wasn't a particularly sharp edge, but it was an edge nonetheless—I think the wizard was growing tired of impertinent questions and refusals.

"Perhaps some sort of job along the lines of an... an expert treasure-hunter, maybe?" I suggested lamely, suddenly finding myself unable to look Gandalf in the eye.

Nora stared at me as though I had gone mad.

The wizard's bushy grey eyebrows slowly rose to hide beneath the brim of his hat from sheer astonishment. "Good gracious me, no," he said. "I already have a burglar in mind for Master Oakenshield and his company. You'll be coming along only as far as Imladris, and there you'll go no further."

Well, go ahead and knock me over with a feather. "I... oh, yes, well... thank you for that assurance, Master Gandalf," I said, once more feeling dazed and shocked and rather confused. I rubbed at my temples and tried not to get soap in my hair, making a very firm decision that I didn't like surprises.

Gandalf nodded once in acknowledgment of my thanks. "One of the stable boys has outfitted a horse for you to ride, Miss Miller. Say your goodbyes, and let us be off," he said. Then he stepped away from the kitchen doorway and left me alone with Nora.

I was much better friends with Nora than I was with Gerda. We embraced as friends and made the usual promises of never forgetting the other, and that we would name each others' children after one another if we were forced to settle far away, and that we would think of each other often and fondly. The usual things. My eyes weren't as dry as I would want them to be by the end of it, but that problem was solved with a wipe of my sleeve.

Master and Mistress Butterbur were much easier to say goodbye to—I respected them both, but had no special fondness for them, and simply apologized for depriving them of my services if there was any debt from me to them that was unpaid. Both of them simply accepted that I was going off and probably would not return. There was no embrace.

In the back of the Prancing Pony, behind the stables, Will was waiting and holding the bridle of a small, stocky piebald horse—the only reason I didn't call it a pony was that it was just barely too big to pass for one. There was a crude saddle on its back, and the saddlebags were already bulging. With what, I had no idea.

"Please tell me that this horse wasn't bought for me," I said quietly to Will once I had walked over to him, eying the horse rather warily as it stamped a hoof on the cobblestones. I'd never been a demanding person and had always hated the feeling I got whenever a gift was given to me. There was always the horrible feeling of being in debt and the urge to pay the person back, and very often I either couldn't or didn't know how.

"That packhorse, my dear, carries some of my supplies," Gandalf said dryly, sitting easily in the saddle of his own, somewhat larger, chestnut steed with his staff balanced across his lap. "It was an easy enough matter for the weight to be distributed to accommodate you. Now, we must be off."

I must have hesitated a moment too long, because Will muttered, "Get on the horse," to me with a pointed glance in my direction, before returning to his part of an impassive stable boy.

I gave him a desperate, pleading look in return, and the boy laced the fingers of his hands into a makeshift step for me. Okay. Well, I could do this. Put one foot on the step, the other in the stirrup, swing the other leg over and... yes, I was sitting in a horse's saddle. It wasn't too terrible. Will patted my knee encouragingly and handed up my pack, where I held it steady behind me as he tied it in place with the other baggage—making sure that I was paying attention to what he was doing and making note of how he did so. If there had been more time (perhaps, say, several days) Will probably would have made me practice tying all of the knots, as well as saddling and bridling and generally taking care of a horse, before I so much as got up into the saddle. All of the Butterbur household knew how clueless I was when it came to... well, everything... and they'd learned how to teach me thoroughly. But now there was no time for that thorough teaching I'd gotten so used to.

"Take care," Will said, stepping away.

"I will," I replied. I'd need to. I grinned a little nervously down at him, this boy who was a year younger than me but acted like my older brother. "At least you won't have to worry about me dying of my own stupidity anymore," I volunteered, trying to make a joke.

I caught a glimpse of Will's face flushing red before he lowered his head to stare at the cobbles beneath his boots. He mumbled something and nervously fidgeted with his hands. All I caught were the words "didn't mind worrying about you" before the boy walked rather quickly away back to the stables. I stared after him, twisted around in the saddle and feeling equal parts confused and shocked.

Gandalf coughed into his beard (or maybe he was just awkwardly clearing his throat) and started out of the courtyard. The piebald packhorse I was sitting on, so used to trailing after Gandalf's own steed, didn't wait for any sort of command from its rider before it started out at a lazy amble behind the wizard's horse.

I squeaked and clung to the reins, swinging around so that I was facing forward. Do not want to fall out of the saddle only two minutes after getting into it. That would be humiliating, even for me. And Will would have to help me back into it, and _that_ would be just... awkward. Yes, that was a good word. Awkward. It seemed to describe my entire life very well.

I glanced down at my feet, wondering how precisely I was supposed to steer or adjust the speed. My dad had been teaching me how to drive before I'd come to Middle-earth, but that didn't exactly prepare me for riding a horse.

"Gandalf?" I asked.

"Miss Miller?"

"What would you say if I told you that I didn't know how to ride a horse?"

There was a long silence.

"I would say, Miss Miller, that I hope you can learn how to do so very quickly."


	5. From Bree to the Shire

**Meh, apologies for the short chapter, but I didn't want to cram both the traveling and the meeting with Bilbo into one chapter - it would feel too crowded and busy, and anyone who's read this far knows that this story is going to be progressing slowly but steadily. We'll get there, but I like to take my time.**

**Also, a shout-out to ****SylphJr****, who is probably the most wonderful person in the whole wide world to me right now for providing both a link to a copy of the script as well as a reccomendation for streaming the movie. Seriously, I would have chickened out and put this story into hiatus if it hadn't been for you. You are awesome and your awesomeness knows no bounds.**

**Also, a question to people who know my story from before: since my original summary no longer fit with my constantly-changing ideas for this story, I changed it. What do y'all think? Is it less interesting than the original? Better? About the same? I'd like your thoughts on the matter.**

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When I was in my before-life I was, for the vast majority of that life, a pedestrian. I lived close enough to my school that I could walk there each day, and since I lived in town then all of my shopping was accomplished either on foot or with the aid of a bicycle. Typically on foot, since I'd never really liked bicycles. Or buses. Cars I was just fine with, but that was because they were a necessity I'd grown up with. Thanks to a phobia of underground places, I refused to use any sort of subway or metro service unless I absolutely had to. Horses as well went on my 'no go' list.

They were large and (in my opinion) rather ungainly animals. Also, they were _prey_ animals, and therefore got spooked over insignificant things and definitely hadn't been created with an overabundance of brains. I had never been one of the girls who went ga-ga over equines. It just wasn't my thing. I made fun of the girls who liked horses, were members of riding stables, and went around with bits of hay in their blond hair. Crazy people. Those young women who actually know what words like 'fetlock' _mean_ and can explain that meaning to you. Over the course of several hours.

Let me formally say that I take back everything I have ever said against them. I have now gone over to the dark side: I have become a horse rider.

The day of my 'adventure' began, as I'd said before, with rain. The downpour was definitely losing its vigor and slackening off now, but it hadn't stopped entirely, and I was soon soaked and miserable. Thankfully, Nora and Will had been thoughtful enough to include a spare cloak of theirs (stained, a little ragged around the hem, but still semi-waterproof and serviceable) and even more thankfully, I had been thoughtful enough to find it and put it on before I completely perfected my "pitiful drowned rat" look.

The piebald as well didn't seem to appreciate the rain in the slightest. The cobbled streets of Bree had been given an enthusiastic washing thanks to the downpour, removing animal waste and trash and generally making everything look clean and presentable... but once outside the town all of the roads were made of dirt—dirt that was changed into mud from all of the rain. The piebald had mud splattered up to its knees and was plodding along, its head down, simply following Gandalf's own horse. I actually felt pretty sorry for it.

Well, I felt sorry for it until I started getting saddle sore, anyway.

Before anyone gets the idea into their head to leap onto the back of their noble white charger and go galloping off into the sunset, let me say this: riding a horse is painful. It hurts. After the three hour mark you'll feel as though your knees and the insides of your thighs are filled with molten lead. I have been assured by Gandalf that this ache will lessen the more you ride the horse, but by the four hour mark your resolve will crumble and you'll find yourself contemplating emergency amputation and hating every step that the horrid animal you're sitting on takes.

Riding sidesaddle is a good way of getting some relief, however, even if you feel as though you're about to fall off every few seconds. And nearly do so. More than a few times. And discover that there is almost no way to ride a horse and look dignified while wearing a dress. Especially while it's raining and you're feeling wet and cold and generally miserable.

The rain gave up in the afternoon however, petering out into nothing more than a light drizzle and eventually a chilly, oppressive mist that had my teeth chattering and my fingers (and nose, and toes, and ears) too numb to really feel anything. Gandalf was snappy and irritable by the time we had located a farmer to spend the night with, maybe because of arthritis-pains in his joints brought on by the cold and wet. I hadn't yet grown suicidal enough to ask about this, of course.

The farmer had no stable, but there was a long, low-hung byre behind his house for keeping cows and sheep, and there was a small free space in the back where the horses could rest for the night. It was here, in a cow byre that stunk of cow dung, wearing wet clothing that was steadily getting covered by straw and with shaking hands, that I learned from an irritable wizard how to properly groom and generally care for a horse.

It was a memorable experience, to say the least. And if sheer fright at the prospect of being turned into 'a creature as bumbling and foolish as you are' is going to ingrain an experience into one's memory, then I dare say that I'll _never_ forget how to properly care for a horse, either. Ever.

Moving on, however... the farmer and his wife were hospitable, if neither clean nor even particularly concerned with hygiene. I tried not to stare in horror. Or wince. Or think longingly of antibacterial soap. Or wonder if I was overdue for vaccines. _And_ I ate everything that was placed in front of me—even the soggy lumps of unidentifiable things that may have once been vegetables in a previous, happier life, as well as the chunks of greyish meat (identified by the stringy toughness) in a watery broth that this pair had the audacity to call a hearty soup. I didn't gag even once.

I helped with the washing-up afterwards (what little there was of it, and with no soap) and then curled up in my cloak in front of the fire. The floor was hard-packed earth covered with rushes (doubtlessly infested with insects, ugh, or at least a copious amount of filth) and the wood in the hearth burned slowly and sullenly and seemed to give off more smoke than heat. Already wet and not drying particularly fast (or at all, really) I would have curled up with the farmer's hairy dogs for more warmth except for the fact that I was afraid of getting fleas and/or ticks from them—I was already worried that I'd gotten lice from my dealings with the humans in the house (no, let's be honest here: hovel) so no need for more parasites from the animals.

Gandalf slept sitting upright in a chair, or at least I think he slept—his eyes remained open even if they seemed vacant and unwatchful, his head upright and not sagging down upon his chest, and I can remember stirring briefly from sleep and rolling over to the sight of an old man sitting in a chair in front of the dying fire, the flames reflected in his staring eyes.

In the morning, I declined the offer of breakfast, and both Gandalf and I were quick to set off on the road once more. The wizard because he desired to reach where he was going, and I because I was happy to leave the farmer, his wife, his house, and his cow byre far behind me. I remember waking up and moving stiffly as I did my morning chores, getting my legs used to walking rather than riding again and stretching everything out. The pain wasn't bad, just uncomfortable, and quickly overcome.

We carried on.

It was still muddy from the rain of the previous few days, but the morning was also shaping up to be a fine day. The sky was a beautiful blue and bright flowers bloomed along the roadside. Birds sang in the trees. It was a warm sunny day that promised happiness in the way that only warm sunny days in May can do so.

I also discovered something interesting about myself: I can ride.

Alright, fine, so maybe it wasn't really riding the way Clint Eastwood did it. My piebald followed Gandalf's horse without question and didn't require much in the way of steering or speed adjustment, and I definitely wasn't a Rohirrim or anything, but I quickly got over my anxiety about horses and learned that it was stupid to sit slumped in the saddle like a useless sack of grain—it made you get sore faster—and that my piebald was wonderfully responsive when not cowed into miserable sulkiness by bad weather. So was I, actually.

After discovering that Gandalf had never named his packhorse, I took the liberty of dubbing my newly-acquired steed "Aragorn"—and it wasn't like I'd idolized the Heir of Isildur since I was little kid or anything and had always wanted to name an animal after him. No, of course not. And that _totally_ wasn't the reason that I decided to keep the name even after Gandalf pointed out that the piebald was, in fact, female, and that Aragorn was a male name.

Nope, totally wasn't that at all. Not even a little bit. And my inner fangirl was being forced into a straight jacket in her little corner of my mind and kept safely out of the way.

The land slowly changed, with the majority of farms shifting over from human to hobbit ownership, and there being more smials than actual houses. I started receiving stares, most of them disapproving ones from older women or else wide-eyed, mouth-agape ones from young men. A stick-thin human girl with secondhand boots and a secondhand dress, _not_ riding sidesaddle and with her dress hitched up _past her knees_ (goodness gracious, the scandal!) because of it, must have been an odd sight. Eventually I gave in and begged Gandalf to stop, tumbling out of the saddle and retreating to a clump of bushes in a small woodland with my pack. I dug around in it, and eventually found my old clothes.

Now, the proper way for women to ride is, of course, sidesaddle. As I've said before. But it's hard for you to stay on the horse when you're riding sidesaddle unless the saddle you're sitting in has been designed specifically for that purpose. That was not the sort of saddle that was on Aragorn's back. If a lady wants to ride _im_properly, it's customary for her to wear items of clothing called _riding skirts_—which are basically very, very baggy pants that make it look as though the lady is wearing a skirt when she isn't. Why males of this world cannot stand the sight of a female _knee_ I will never know nor understand, but I didn't like the way the women pursed their lips in disapproval and doubtlessly classified me as a, ahem, 'woman of the night'. So I _really_ wanted a riding skirt.

Unfortunately, I didn't own a riding skirt. I did, however, possess a pair of faded bluejeans. They hadn't been washed in about ten months—but then again, neither had they been worn in all that time either. I slipped them on quickly, marveling somewhat at the feel of denim against my skin after going for nearly a year with only scratchy wool or coarse linen, and frowned.

My jeans were too big for me. I'd dropped from my weight of about 122 pounds to... well, somewhere a ways below that, anyway. The "more work, less food" regime of Middle-earth had apparently been good for my waistline. The pants that had once been comfortable and snug now rode low on my hips and made me constantly want to pull them back up.

I jogged back to Gandalf (who was waiting patiently) apologized for the delay, swung back into the saddle, and then we continued onwards without further mishap. From then on I received fewer disapproving stares thanks to having my pale and (cringe) unshaven legs covered and out of sight. Thank goodness.

Days passed. The saddle soreness slowly eased into what was, by the end of each day, a bearable ache. My lessons in caring for Aragorn were cemented into my mind, and I like to think that the piebald didn't mind me as a rider. Also, it was surprisingly easy to relax while traveling with Gandalf: the wizard knew my history and was neither ashamed nor frightened by it, and simply accepted me for what I was: a stranger in a strange land, a lost child who was far from her home. He was surprisingly patient, though definitely irritable when he perceived that I wasn't taking notice of anything he tried to tell me, and made a point of giving thorough explanations whenever I asked about anything—from the guest/host customs of hobbits to the names of the flowers that bloomed on the roadside.

After a time we passed into Buckland, and there spent a night at Brandy Hall as guests of the Master of Buckland. The Master was a hobbit who still remembered Gandalf fondly and was pleased by the visit. I stayed in the background and cared for the horses, for the most part remaining outside of the Hall rather than in as Gandalf was—it wasn't that I didn't like the place, but the May weather was kind and warm and Brandy Hall had been designed by a people who thought that five feet was a good height for a ceiling.

The next day, we crossed the Brandywine Bridge and entered the Shire, and I fell in love with Middle-earth all over again.

* * *

The Shire is a place of gently rolling hills and tilled fields, pastures filled with lush green grass being cropped by fat milk cows, sheep, and ponies, and grassy hillsides whose tops sprouted chimneys and washing lines, with brightly-painted round doors set at their bases. The apple orchards were heavy with blossom, and flowers were clustered in neat beds beside each little door. Bees droned everywhere, lazy and fat on Spring-flower pollen. Butterflies flitted from bloom to bloom. Birds sang in the trees. Children laughed and played in the lanes and hedgerows, and pastries cooled on window-ledges.

There were tame little woodlands here and there, nothing that would ever contain a bear or a wolf, and the people walked about and spoke to others with utter surety of their safety. Crime was something that was rare and uncommon, and generally not very harmful. A home being broken into and the silver stolen would supply the neighborhood gossips with enough talk to last for several months—it was even uncommon here for people to lock their doors at night. Local law enforcement were the Bounders, a bunch of hobbits who were more along the lines of what I would call "local traffic cop that everyone is on a first-name basis with" than anything else.

The Shire had little by way of silver and gold, but it was rich with peace and prosperity and the everyday happiness of simple folk. You could live a life of utter contentment here, so long as you had no great longings for adventure or faraway places where more interesting things happened.

Gandalf and I progressed along, seeming to take our own sweet time with everything. I stopped often to pick flowers and braid them into my hair in the fashion of the local hobbit lasses, feeling safe and contented and lulled into happiness by the lazy peace of the place. I was a human in the land of the Little Folk, a stranger and an oddity, but there was no open hostility and the halflings were more curious than afraid.

The wizard and I slept at inns or else in the home of anyone who would take us in for the night in return for a bit of coin, and I discovered something completely and utterly wonderful—hobbits enjoy bathing. In Bree, people looked at you funny if you took a bath more than twice a year, but Shire hobbits seemed to greatly enjoy immersing themselves in hot water and were pleasantly surprised to find a human who shared their sentiments. Baths were a lot of work, heating up the necessary amount of water to fill about three inches of a wooden tub meant to contain a person the size of a child, but they were so,_ so_ worth it after being rained on and sleeping on dirty floors. I scrubbed and washed and danced about the washroom with suds in my hair, delighting in the feeling of being clean _everywhere_. I loved this place. I could stay in the Shire forever and never be unhappy.

But, of course, there was a rather important Adventure that needed seeing to...

"This is The Hill, isn't it?" I asked, glancing up the road towards the tall, gently-sloping hill in front of us. Its sides were lined with the brightly painted round doors that indicated hobbit-holes, some green and yellow, some blue, a few red like autumn leaves.

"Yes, it is," Gandalf answered.

"And is that the Party Tree?" I asked, gesturing towards a likely-looking tree. And just think, when Bilbo turned a hundred and eleven, under that very tree, he would use the ring he had obtained on the adventure that he was about to set out on _right now_ to disappear and cause the greatest uproar of Shire gossip ever...

"That, my dear, is nothing more than a tree on a hillside," Gandalf observed dryly, interrupting my internal musings. "Over _there _is the Party Tree." He gestured with his staff and redirected my gaze. I felt my cheeks warm slightly as they reddened from embarrassment, and the wizard smiled into his beard and clucked to his horse. It broke into a walk, with Aragorn following, and before long we found ourselves at the beginning of Bagshot Row.

_And Number 3 will be Sam's house_... I thought, staring at the third little round door in silent wonder. Gandalf slid from the back of his horse and tethered the beast to a hitching post at the base of the Row, and waited for me to copy him before continuing along down the quaint little lane on foot.

"Gandalf?" I asked, walking along beside him.

"Yes, Miss Miller?" he replied.

"You're going to ask Bilbo to go on the adventure with Thorin, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." Abruptly the wizard stopped and turned so that we faced each other. He leaned on his staff and regarded me for several long moments—a long-legged, lanky teenage girl wearing clothing that didn't quite fit, the ends of bluejeans peeking out from beneath the dusty hem of her green dress, with slightly-wilted flowers threaded through her dark hair.

"Miss Katie Miller..." the wizard said, "I believe that it would be for the best if you kept your knowledge secret from now on. If anyone inquires as to why I have brought you with me—namely Mr. Baggins and the Dwarves of the Company—then you must simply say that you are my apprentice and are learning wizardry from me."

I stared at Gandalf for a long moment. "But..." I said when I remembered how to use my tongue, "You're an Istari, a Maia come to earth. I'm... well, I'm _not_. Nothing human has the ability to just 'learn magic' the way you'd learn a... a card trick!"

"And very few apart from the Eldar know of my origins," the wizard pointed out, starting to walk again with me beside him. "I daresay that Mr. Baggins will think of me as nosy old Man." He didn't seem displeased by this, and chuckled once.

"He'll remember your fireworks well," I pointed out, trying to be loyal.

"Will he indeed..."

* * *

**Okay, to all the people I told about changing my mind and having the meeting with Bilbo in this chapter... I lied. I'm sorry and I didn't know it at the time, but I did. All I could really be certain about when I said that was the fact that I didn't like the previous ending very much and knew that it needed something, and so assumed that I should have fitted the meeting into this chapter. Well, I was wrong. All that the chapter needed was a different ending. I'm just as annoyed as you are about this, actually XP I hate saying something to people and then doing something entirely different. It does absolutely nothing good for my integrity as a writer.**


	6. Many Meetings

**I'm still alive and writing, though I think school is trying to prevent that from continuing - chapter updates might be a little slower from now on, thanks to the public education system and my algebra teacher. Apologies.**

**Still don't own _The Hobbit._**

* * *

If I remembered correctly from reading the book, Bilbo Baggins was about fifty years old when he set out on his adventure with Thorin and Co. However, standing slightly behind Gandalf and watching the son of Bungo Baggins grow more flustered with every passing minute of conversation with the wizard, I could honestly say that Bilbo didn't look his age. He looked... well, I had never been very good with guessing ages, but my estimate would be perhaps mid-thirties.

The hobbit wore an embroidered yellow waistcoat with brass buttons overtop a creamy white cotton shirt, and his hair was curly and light brown in color. His eyes were brown. And, to top it all off, if Bilbo and I had been standing side by side then the poor hobbit wouldn't have come up to my breastbone, even.

It was so strange, to be looking so far down at someone who was at least twice my age. At five feet and six inches, I was used to being about average height for my own world and the high school crowd. But in Bree, I had been somewhat closer to the upper end of the scale, though definitely not the tallest person around (the Rangers that had occasionally booked rooms at the Pony had certainly made me feel small). Now, in the Shire, I felt as though I had stepped into Neverland—everyone was the size of relatively young children, no matter their actual age. There were adult male hobbits that I could have picked up and carried piggyback the way I'd carried my five-year-old brothers.

It was decidedly disturbing. I had known that Bilbo was going to be small and had thought that I'd gotten used to hobbits from living in Bree and traveling through the Shire, but Bilbo had done great things that had belied his small size—I had been expecting him to be taller than what he actually was.

I'd also forgotten how silly the hobbit had acted at the beginning of the book, apparently.

"An adventure?" Bilbo was asking, echoing Gandalf, looking momentarily confused and surprised. But then his expression hardened—not quite into anger, but definitely into thinking that the strangers who had shown up at his front gate were Low Class People. "No," he said. "I don't think that anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things..." The hobbit stood up from the bench he had been sitting on and opened his mailbox. "Make you late for dinner!" he added as an afterthought, almost defiantly, as though voicing the chiefest horror that adventures brought.

The hobbit began sorting through the post he had received, glancing up occasionally at Gandalf and I—doubtlessly hoping that we would continue on our way and cease vexing him. The wizard, of course, did no such thing and simply continued looking at the halfling as he nervously puffed smoke and champed on the stem of his pipe. I was beginning to more fully understand why the dwarves had been so unimpressed with Bilbo: _this_ uptight, nervous little gentleman was supposed to steal treasure from Smaug the Terrible? It was hard to imagine any such scenario with a possible ending besides that of flames and a shrill, swiftly cut off scream.

I guess something of my rather underwhelmed opinion must have shown itself on my face, because Bilbo glanced nervously up at me. Our eyes met for perhaps a quarter of a second before his gaze quickly skittered away from me, and then the same thing happened with Gandalf. "Good morning," he said nervously again, before turning and heading towards his door.

"To think that I should have lived to be good morning-ed by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door," Gandalf said, giving me a rather peeved look as though he had been expecting better from his potential burglar and blamed me for the lapse in quality. I shrugged helplessly and apologetically.

Bilbo stopped and turned around. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, once more looking confused. But not nervous now, or a little bit frightened. Just confused.

"You've changed, and not entirely for the better, Bilbo Baggins," Gandalf pointed out.

"Wait, you two know each other?" I asked. I couldn't remember any sort of prior contact between Gandalf and Bilbo... surely any association would have been mentioned in the books, and I had read them all enough times that I should have remembered that sort of thing...

"Yes, yes, do I know you?" Bilbo demanded in turn, nodding once to me in thanks for voicing his thoughts.

"Well, you know my name, though you don't remember I belong to it. I'm Gandalf, and Gandalf means..." the Istari trailed off, desperately searching his mind for a suitable descriptor, before giving up. "Gandalf means _me_," he said at last.

The look on Bilbo's face was a carbon copy of what mine had been when I'd realized that Thorin Oakenshield was standing in front of me. Complete with that little edge of panic and utter terror.

"Not... not Gandalf the wandering wizard, who made such _excellent_ fireworks?" Bilbo demanded. _"Son of Thrain? Son of Thror?"_ I remembered asking, though there was more delight than fright in Bilbo's voice than mine had contained. I grinned, happy for him. "Old Took used to have them on Midsummer's Eve!" Bilbo said, breaking into a smile himself and chuckling once.

"What were they like?" I asked before I could stop myself, emboldened by Gandalf's obvious pleasure at being flattered and Bilbo's own sudden curiosity and joyful interest.

Bilbo turned and looked at me, and there was a happy, remembering light in his eyes that hinted of childhood wonder and fascination. "Oh, Miss, you should have seen them! They used to go up like great lilies and snapdragons and hang in the twilight all evening!" Bilbo said, and laughed again, a little more loudly and freely than before. "And there were sparklers..." he trailed off abruptly, coughing once into his fist and blinking owlishly, either unwilling or unused to speaking with children of the Big Folk who were several times larger than he was. He went back to safer ground and looked at Gandalf. "I didn't know you were still in business," he remarked, deliberately casual.

"And where else should I be?" Gandalf demanded. Bilbo, not knowing how to answer, returned to puffing on his pipe and champing nervously on the stem of it. I felt my previous mood of distinct unimpressed-ness come back to me, and idly wondered what would happen if the stem of that pipe happened to break as the hobbit chewed it.

"Well," Gandalf said, "I'm pleased to find you remember something about me, even if it is only my fireworks. That's decided, then. It will be very good for you, and most amusing for me. Miss Miller and I shall inform the others."

"Inform the _who_?" Bilbo demanded. His expression changed to one that would have been very accurately called horror if this situation had been different. If I had been told that I needed to distract Shelob while Frodo and Sam sneaked through her Lair, I probably would have worn something very similar on my own face. "What?" he asked again when Gandalf didn't bother to reply. "No, no, no! We don't want _any_ adventures here, thank you! Not today, not anytime else! I suggest you try over the Hill or... or across the Water! Good morning!" And with those final words, Bilbo darted into his hobbit hole and shut the door behind him.

Gandalf laughed quietly before opening the gate and mounting the steps to the hobbit's front door, using the butt of his staff to carve the mark of the elf-rune G into the bright green wood. I frowned as I watched it glow blue in the cheery morning sunlight.

"That's the sign that's going to—"

"Yes, Miss Miller, indeed it is," Gandalf said placidly, swiftly cutting me off as he straightened and stretched once. "And now, we must be going about the aforementioned business of summoning the other members of Master Oakenshield's expedition. A glowing sigil is absolutely useless if no-one knows where to look for it." The wizard turned and began walking back the way he had come, descending from the steps and heading back down the lane.

I cast one last glance behind me at the little green door with its shining mark, then hurried after Gandalf.

* * *

Back at the Green Dragon Inn at Bywater, I was sitting at a table in the common room and slowly draining a cup of cold tea, holding a hand to my forehead in an attempt to disguise the bruise that was forming at my hairline. A group of hobbits burst into laughter behind me, and I twisted in my seat quickly enough to see one of them mime jumping up in surprise and hitting his head on a rafter, to rowdy applause and more laughter from his fellows. I felt my face flush from embarrassment again and scowled into my cup, trying to hunch a little deeper into my chair.

"There is absolutely no use in trying to hide, Miss Miller," Gandalf observed, puffing on his pipe so that a pall of bluish smoke hung over his head. "Every person in this room observed your feat. Or at the very least they turned to look when they heard the thud."

"Thank you so much for that consolation, Master Wizard. I'll be certain to come to you whenever I next publicly humiliate myself thanks to a dwarf shouting in my ear," I grumbled, staring morosely down at the solitary strawberry tart that now occupied the plate in front of me. Before I'd gotten my bruise there had been four, but now when I looked at them there was only one.

I glanced up at Gandalf and narrowed my eyes, trying to see if there were crumbs caught in his beard. Grandfatherly old man with unimpeachable morals my _foot_...

"He was not 'shouting in your ear', Miss Miller," Gandalf said, interrupting my examination. His tone was scolding, but there was a gleam in his ancient blue eyes that suggested the entire affair was greatly amusing to him. "Master Dwalin did nothing more than announce himself and inquire if I was to be found here."

"By shouting."

"Yes, by shouting. A good many yards away from your ears—at the doorway, in fact."

"It was still loud."

"Have some wine, Miss Miller. Or whine, if you prefer." That amused gleam was gone from Gandalf's eyes. He'd had enough of my self-pity. I chose the path of wisdom and decided to shut up before I was turned into a rabbit, and nibbled on the last tart as I warily eyed Dwalin. He was missing the green hood and cloak that I remembered from the book, and looked more like a very short Viking than anything else—complete with furs, leathers, double axes, and runic tattoos. The dwarf was leaning against the bar and holding a serious discussion about local brews with proprietor of the Green Dragon. The poor hobbit looked absolutely terrified and was stuttering badly.

"I thought they would all be here," I remarked, sucking a piece of strawberry tart-filling (whatever you called it) from my thumb. "The dwarves, I mean. Not just Dwalin." Hobbits love both the making _and_ eating of food, and they perform both tasks with great skill. If I stayed in the Shire much longer I'd probably start to get fat.

"Oh, no," Gandalf said, leaning back in his seat. "I was afraid that Bilbo would have changed too much since his youth to be of good use as a member of Thorin's company, and so simply stated in my proposed plan that the burglar was to be found in the Shire."

"I hear my brother Balin iz someplace close... Wot's the name—Frogmorton," Dwalin said, his voice rough as gravel and (_this_ time) right beside my ear. I jumped in my seat and heard a rumbling chuckle. "Don't hit yer head agin, lassie," Dwalin said, unceremoniously plunking a plate of chicken (what looked like nearly the entire bird, in fact, plucked and roasted and seasoned) down at an empty space at the table and sitting down. The dwarf commenced eating, meat-juices running through his beard.

I stared at him in shock for a moment, then slowly moved to the next chair over so that I was completely out of the field of fire. That poor chicken...

"We shall have to gather them up," Gandalf said, speaking to Dwalin and not me. The dwarf nodded once, and then went back to eating as though he had just made it through a seven-year famine and was making up for lost meals.

I resumed my own nibbling, deliberately trying to be dainty and not make a mess of crumbs everywhere. The gesture probably went right over Dwalin's tattooed head, but still... I felt better for my petty vengeance, however small it was.

"Aye," Dwalin said, tearing a strip of flesh off a drumstick. "Bofur and his lot aren't too far from here... We'll be fetchin' them fer the meetin', won't we?"

"So we shall," Gandalf said, pulling a roll of paper out from his sleeve with what might have been the tiniest of flourishes. Dwalin moved his plate out of the way and made a halfhearted attempt to wipe the grease off the tabletop before Gandalf spread the paper across the table—it was a map of the Shire, each little hamlet and village marked out and named, with squiggly lines depicting rivers and roads.

I watched with interest as Dwalin stabbed one of his blunt, stubby fingers down at the map, pointing out towns and villages where he knew the other members of the quest were. Not all of the thirteen dwarves were accounted for in Dwalin's knowledge—some had come from the east and some had come from the north, and Thorin himself had been attending a meeting in Ered Luin and would very probably not reach the Shire for at_ least_ another day.

It seemed that my presence wasn't needed, though: the dwarf and the wizard were busy, divvying up the task of rounding up the other dwarves between themselves and completely ignoring me. I didn't mind being ignored, but it was plain that they neither wanted nor needed my input on what they were doing.

I finished up my tart and brushed off the front of my dress, then carefully got out of my seat and went up to the barkeep. Sitting on one of the little stools would have made me feel like I was in a children's playhouse, and it was too far to bend to lean on the bar itself while remaining upright. I settled for just standing in front of it.

"Hello, Miss. Can I help you?" the barkeep asked, looking wary. He knew which table I'd come from, and who else was sitting there. At least he'd lost his stutter.

"Do you have some paper, a quill, and ink I could use? I need to write a note to a friend," I said. The hobbit nodded and gestured to one of the small children that were sitting and playing on the floor—it got up and ran into the back room, probably into the section of the Green Dragon that the owner's family itself lived in, and returned shortly with the items I had requested.

Sitting down on one of the bar stools made me feel grotesquely oversized, but at least the tiny chair didn't break under my weight—this was a piece of furniture designed to be used in a place where copious amounts of alcohol were consumed; it had been made with sturdiness in mind.

Very, very carefully, I began to write: _Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, I would like to tell you that a party of dwarves (13 total) plus one wizard plus one wizard's apprentice_ (there was a very uncalled-for thrill of equal parts pride and delight as I finished the final curve of the last letter in apprentice) _will be arriving at your house at the time of..._

"Gandalf, when will the dwarves be arriving at the burglar's house?"

"Starting at eight o'clock on Wednesday evening, I should say," the wizard replied.

"If all goes well," Dwalin added in a sour growl.

_...at the time of eight o'clock on Wednesday. Please do not be alarmed, as they mean no harm to you. They will be hungry, and dwarves have very large appetites, so be sure that your larder is stocked and will not suffer for whatever depletion will be caused to it. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Katharine Miller (honorary wizard's apprentice). PS Bilbo Baggins, don't you dare disregard this letter._

The letters were a bit shaky and far too blocky, not my usual neat script that had been developed during a time when ballpoint pens weren't merely a wishful fantasy of mine. There were also ink splatters on the scrap of paper, unsightly blotches of slick blackness on the smooth cream, and I frowned at them for a moment before tamping down the cork into the small bottle of ink and carefully placing the quill atop it.

I thanked the hobbit who was running the bar and left the Green Dragon, making a point of ducking under the rafters so as not to hit my head a second time, and then wandered out of Bywater and up the lane to The Hill and Bagshot Row. I found the little bench where Bilbo had once been sitting deserted, and knocking on the green door did nothing to make the hobbit appear.

I think that the soon-to-be burglar was hiding, actually.

With a disappointed sigh, I put the note in the mailbox and turned around to go back down the Row, my hands clasped lightly behind my back. I was... well, I guess the best word was nervous, but that didn't entirely fit the mood I was feeling. I was a little bit afraid of what would happen at eight o'clock on Wednesday evening, but also expectant and elated, and feeling as though I was having the most amazing dream and would wake up soon—there was a sense of unreality to everything, like I couldn't believe what was around me was actually real. The surreal feeling had happened to me when I'd first figured out that I was in Bree and had lingered for several weeks, but it hadn't been quite this strong; perhaps it was simply because I was about to see _canon characters_ (and a whole bunch of them) straight out of what had been my favorite book before my age had hit double digits.

I kept on reaching out to run my hands over the fence-rails that bordered Bagshot Row, feeling the splintery, ivy-covered wood under my fingers and being reassured that yes, this was truly happening and yes, it was still real, and no, it wasn't simply a dream I was having.

It was real, and I was trying to change it.

Alright, fine, so it was a _little_ change: having Bilbo not wondering why all of the dwarves were showing up and raiding his pantry probably wouldn't cause him to decline being a burglar for Thorin's Company. But dammit, I had learned about cause-and-effect in school and from reading. Little things could have big consequences—like a mouse overturning a pebble on a mountain slope as it scurried around looking for seeds. The pebble rolled down and it started other pebbles rolling and the pebbles became bigger and bigger until they were _rocks_ and the rocks became _stones_ and the stones became _boulders_ and before you knew it you had an avalanche that wiped out an entire town. All because of a mouse that was searching for something to eat.

I couldn't change things. Nothing besides very, very little things. The regaining of Erebor and the slaying of Smaug were at stake here—and even more importantly, there were also Bilbo's finding of the One Ring hanging in the balance as well. The fate of all Middle-earth depending solely on Bilbo finding a trinket in a cave, giving it to his nephew, and his nephew going on an epic quest to destroy it and save Arda from evil. This wasn't just my favorite childhood story... this was... oh my god, this was the tale that set up a famous fantasy trilogy about how the fate of the world depended on small things.

Small things like hobbits, Tolkien had probably been thinking. Small things like unnecessary additions and adjustments, _I_ was thinking. How much would it take to make the pendulum swing out of balance and cause Sauron to take over Arda? Was the life of a teenage girl from a different place enough to cause the Dark Lord to rise again in power?

Christ, Christ, Christ... I wrapped my arms around my midsection and sank down to my knees beside the lane, breathing in the scent of the flowering vines that had scaled the low fence beside me and feeling the sun warm my shoulders and head. The grass was a soft seat beneath me, and somewhere down the Row a hobbit woman was singing a song about flowers as she hung out her washing on a line.

I couldn't... Gandalf should never have brought me along on this... should have just stayed in Bree and kept waiting to go home, if I ever would...

There was the sound of hooves clopping up the road, drawing closer to the beginning of the Row where I was sitting. They grew louder and louder, and eventually a shadow blocked out the sun and I felt something blow grassy breath onto the top of my head.

"Are you well, Miss Miller?" Gandalf asked me, sitting astride his horse.

"I... I... y-yes, I'm fine. Completely fine," I replied shakily, pushing the nose of the wizard's horse away from my face and slowly standing up. I still had my arms wrapped around my midsection and I must have looked a little too pale to support my claim, because Gandalf squinted at me and frowned for a long moment before replying.

"Very well then," he said eventually, handing me a creased piece of paper. It was soft and off-white in color, not like the printer paper that I had gotten used to in 21st century public libraries and schools. Unfolding it, I found a rough copy of the map of the Shire that I had seen Gandalf using in the Green Dragon. Most of the little details had been omitted, and the writing looked rather airy—as though the wizard had been hurrying and not concentrating on good penmanship.

"What's this for?" I asked, looking back up at the wizard after my cursory examination of the map.

"You are to inform Balin son of Fundin of where Mr. Baggins is to be found, as well as Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Balin can be found in Frogmorton, and the rest should be in Tuckborough," Gandalf said, reaching down and pointing out each location on the crude map he had given me.

It seemed that my wells of internal panic simply _couldn't_ go empty. I felt my throat dry out and my palms start to sweat. Retrieve the dwarves. Alone. Without supervision.

"You trust me with this?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yes, I do," Gandalf said. He frowned at me. "Good gracious, child, you look as though I've turned you into a rabbit and found a hungry fox to introduce you to. There is no need for panic. The Shire is a very safe place to travel in."

* * *

**Goodness, the first part of the chapter was a bore :P I hate writing canon dialogue scenes. They're boring and the only one being surprised is Katie.**


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